The short answer? Maybe. The ticket industry as we know it, however, is certainly changing. According to the Biz of Baseball, a few MLB squads have implemented technology such as Tickets@Phone, a service which texts you a barcode for your ticket. This effectively eliminates the paper ticket, which could put a serious damper on the scalping market. Here's how it works:
The Nationals, Athletics, Pirates, and Rangers are examples of the clubs that now offer the service which allows those clubs to deliver tickets to a cell phone via a standard multimedia text message, allowing fans to use their cell phone as a ticket.
The message contains a unique barcode and the usual ticket information.
The fan then saves the message in their in-box, and presents it as their "ticket" to the game.
The service is being touted one more way to make going to the game easier.
I see a few problems here. What if you don't have a cell phone? Also, couldn't you just forward the text onto someone else? If you can't scan in your cell phone at the gate, wouldn't the attendant and yourself be holding up the line pretty bad if he/she has to crosscheck the barcode?
And even though this puts scalpers and ticket brokers at a disadvantage, I'd be willing to bet they'll find a way to make this technology work for them.
There are some kinks to work out here for sure --as is the case with any new technology -- but sometime in the near future the paper ticket as we know may be obsolete.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-22-2007 @ 5:46PM
Moe Man said...
0 Comments on this subject. Boring. I learned nothing.
"I see a few problems here"
yes one of them is you.
Reply
7-22-2007 @ 8:43PM
Seth Olson said...
Teams will always sell blocks of tickets to brokers because in the end, they WANT to sell as many tickets as they can.
It is a no brainer that mobile ticketing is coming, and coming fast. I think broker technology will also improve, and these teams will sell to brokers via mobile capabilities. I wouldn't be surprised to see a seconary ticketing service like stubhub! then turn around and resell these bar codes to consumers.
I'd suggest keeping an eye on ticket broker software companies such as http://www.TicketNetwork.com and secondary ticket sites such as http://www.TicketLiquidator.com to see how they continue to develop and use future technologies for selling tickets.
Seth Olson
Executive Director
http://www.TicketNews.com
Reply
7-23-2007 @ 1:52PM
Blog Patrol said...
A seemingly independent media opinion - "I'd suggest keeping an eye on ticket broker software companies such as TicketNetwork.com and... TicketLiquidator.com to see how they continue to develop and use future technologies for selling tickets" - Seth Olson, Executive Director, TicketNews.com. Dude, aren't you all part of the same company?
Reply
7-23-2007 @ 5:33PM
ZXE said...
It's a great idea,who cares about scalpers anyway
I remember some fans not too long ago who got scammed out of thousands of dollars by an unscrupulous greed monger in florda for superbowl
packages. People are always skeptical when new technology comes about but we are moving towards a
paperless society slowly but surely.
Reply